Still Here, Abstinent and Grateful

Hi, I'm Charlie, compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

Grateful this morning for 88 days of abstinence. Grateful for the willingness to work my program, one day at a time. Grateful for my many friends in recovery, in my face-to-face meetings, my phone meeting community and my Twitter/blog community. Grateful for my family; my strong, loving, faithful wife; my crazy herd of awesome kids; and my loving God. You all are my lifeline.

I've been awfully quiet here and on Twitter lately, but that's just because my "real life" is very, very full right now. I'm sure a huge post is just below the surface, waiting to be written when the time is right. Until then, I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other. One day at a time, in the strength of my Higher Power, I can do this.

I'm excited to attend the Friday night phone meeting tonight. Hope some of you can join me! And then tomorrow afternoon I am meeting my sponsor to do the "stepping up" ceremony. It's essentially the end of Step 3, and there are candles and everything! I'll let you know how it goes. After I've "stepped up" privately, then I'll do it on a phone meeting at some point and then I'll be a Sponsor... Whether and when I sponsor anyone else will be something my sponsor and I decide together.

Remember today: You are loved. You are more precious than you can imagine. You are worth it.

Living the Message = Carrying the Message

My name is Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

Today I want to talk about what the 12th Step talks about: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to [compulsive overeaters], and to practice these principles in all our affairs." I've been thinking about this a lot since Friday night. I was at a concert, and I saw a very obese woman. She was one of the largest people I've ever seen out in public, and it looked like everything she did was difficult. I felt just awful for her, and I wondered what my obligation was/is to help people who are still suffering from the ravages of this disease.

It was still on my mind the next day, so I talked to a friend in OA with 3+ years of abstinence and amazing physical recovery. She had some great things to say, and I started to feel some peace.

Then, amazingly, this was my reading and question on Sunday:

Read Chapter 11 (BB). Discuss and reflect upon the vision God has for you. Discuss at length what this concept means to you: "The answers will come if our own house is in order."

My writing:

I love this chapter, because so much of it is about carrying the message to other people. I have been thinking about the incredible epidemic of compulsive eating all around me. I know I can’t diagnose other people’s illness, but I also know that our disease is under-diagnosed. I have been a compulsive overeater for years and didn’t know it until 2006. I’ve been thinking about this since Friday night. I was at a concert, and I saw a very obese woman in the back row. My heart just broke for her, because I could tell how difficult it was for her to even be there. At least physically. I was happy that she could still get out and about, but I wondered how to carry the message of Overeaters Anonymous to her! In A Vision for You, we read about Bill W. and Doctor Bob and how they carried the message to other desperate alcoholics. There are, of course, corresponding principles. That’s why I’m reading the Big Book! But I don’t know how to reach out to that woman… You can’t just walk up to someone and say, “You look like you could use Overeaters Anonymous,” unless you want to hurt and embarrass someone!

I talked about this with a wise Program friend yesterday, and her thoughts made sense to me. We carry the message by living it. By working the best Program that we can. By surrendering to God, by growing in our conscious contact with God, by releasing excess weight to God (in God’s time), by making calls and going to meetings and doing service… And being ready to share the message when people are ready to hear it, and when we are asked. If we are living the Program, our lives will show it. We will have what people want and when they ask us how we got it, we’ll be ready to tell them.

When the book says, “the answers will come if our own house is in order,” it is in the context of asking God every day what we can do for the person who still suffers. And the answer is just what I’ve been writing about: living a good Program, surrendering to God on a daily basis, working the steps, staying abstinent. Living the message leads to carrying the message.

The amazing coincidence (although I don’t believe it’s coincidence) is that even as I type this, I am getting direct messages on Twitter from a person who discovered my anonymous OA blog…  pouring out her heart about... At this very moment… I am living out the message. And now I have this beautiful opportunity to carry the message, to point someone toward the solution. I am so grateful. Here I go!

 

I ended up talking with that person on the phone and carrying the message that afternoon. Then I was able to do an interview with AllTreatment.com. Then I talked with an old program friend the next evening and hooked her up with a sponsor.

I'm so grateful for a weekend of encountering God, living the message and carrying the message.

Belief and Unbelief

Hi, I'm Charlie, a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

In my daily program work, I've been reading and answering questions about the first three steps. It's been bringing up some really interesting and, I think, important stuff for me. Here's a "balance sheet" I had to create, listing all the reasons I could think of for believing in God and all the reasons I could think of for not believing in God. I think it was a really good exercise, and I'm still thinking about these things a couple of weeks later...

I believe in God because of my own personal experiences with God. I have especially fond memories of 2002-2005, the early years of my coming into the light with my other addiction. I have never experienced so much light and hope. I experienced God in many profound, personal experiences… In prayer and meditation, in reading scripture, in listening to music and reading books. I also experienced God through God’s people… my sisters and brothers in Christ who loved me and listened to me and helped me. I experienced grace as I told my story and time after time found acceptance, forgiveness and affirmation. I was overwhelmed with God’s love. All of the fear of God was gone. Just the gratitude and acceptance remained.

Sometimes I don’t believe in God because I don’t feel God’s presence in my life. I still am tempted by things that I wish would be long behind me. If I felt God’s presence in my home of California, surrounded by loving friends who really knew me and my family, it’s harder to feel God in “the wilderness,” wondering when I’ll really feel close to someone. I'm really missing my good friends from California. I thought God led us to move away from that community and church, but I have severe doubts about it sometimes now.

I believe in God because so many reasonable, faithful, intelligent, trustworthy women and men do. They convince me again and again with their words and, more importantly, with their lives.

Sometimes I doubt God because so many rational, kind, thoughtful, moral people are agnostics or atheists. Many have left the faith. I spent a season not too long ago journeying with three people who had left my evangelical or Christian faith for agnosticism or atheism: Julia Sweeney, in her one-woman show “Letting Go of God,” David Bazan’s album “Curse Your Branches” and Bart Ehrman’s “God’s Problem.” As I read, watched and listened to their words, I grew more and more convinced that they just might be right.

I believe in God for the “big reasons”: I believe there has to be some kind of “first cause.” I believe there has to be some kind of intelligent designer. I believe there is something greater than us out there. I believe there has to be some “true north,” some ultimate moral compass that all people acknowledge.

I see that every “big reason” I have for believing in God can be explained away philosophically. I think that’s why faith is so important. At some point I have to take a leap of faith. It’s not all going to make sense.

I believe in God because of what I see in God’s absence: hatred, fear, addiction, all our character defects and individuals and groups.

Sometimes I doubt God’s existence because I see the ugliness that religion and religious people have brought into this world. Religion is not exempt from evil. And I see good in people who have no belief in God. This doesn’t cause me to seriously doubt though. If God is real, then his goodness can come through anyone, whether they believe or not.

I believe in God because of the grandeur of nature on a large scale: oceans, mountains, plains, the Grand Canyon. I believe in God because of the intricacy of nature on a small scale: cells, atoms, insects and amoebas.

Sometimes I doubt the existence of God precisely because of nature. Evolution and billions of years of erosion, etc. really can account for just about everything I see.

I believe in God because I see God’s image in so many people – and because so many of those people look nothing like me. Every tribe, every tongue, every nation giving glory to God in their own beautifully diverse ways.

Sometimes I don’t believe in God because of the diversity of belief in God. Surely if God were real, he/she/it could be more clear in its revelation.

I believe in God because I’ve heard so many miracle stories. Hell, I've experienced and told those miracle stories!

Sometimes I don’t believe in God because those miracle stories turn out to be lies. And any supposed miracle can be a coincidence.

I believe in God because I’ve experienced God in a crazy collection of letters, prophetic writings, songs, histories, stories written by dozens of people over thousands of years and preserved for millennia.

Sometimes I doubt God’s existence because the Holy Scriptures are basically a jumbled mess. Are we Christians imposing a metanarrative on the text?

I believe in God because something deep inside me knows God is there.

I always thought I had been given the spiritual gift of faith: that no matter what, I would have a deep down, bedrock belief in God. Then I started to doubt. It was scary. I lost that assurance. Feelings aren’t fact.

I believe in God because I want God to be true so badly. It’s like God is too good NOT to be true. The bible teaches that each person has “eternity in our heart,” set there by God, to lead us to Him. I see that in my own life and countless others.

As I say to my sponsor every day after reading my writing to her: The End.